Monday, June 28, 2010

G20 Black Bloc get green light to rampage

A photojournalist followed and filmed 75 to 100 Black Bloc for 90 minutes and 24 blocks as they rampaged through the streets of Toronto smashing windows and torching police cars while police looked calmly on from several different locations. Why was this rampage allowed to happen? Police say they had already infiltrated a Black Bloc group and knew what to expect, but tonight the head of G20 security operations told an incredulous Susan Ormiston on CBC that the police had better things to do than attend to the Black Bloc. So much for "serve and protect" then if you're not a G20 fence.

Well, perhaps not all of them dumped their black gear. Below some 20 plainclothes, including a couple of blackclad guys in hoodies, are seen making a run for safety behind a police line. The crazyangry woman who attacks the photographer scampers off with them.

After Montebello, we should demand to know exactly what these guys were up to here.

20 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Any time now someone will be along to tell you that Black Bloc is a tactic and not the name of a specific group. All mention of them recently must include this vital bit of info because they don't have a rollcall or something. Snerk.

I'm sure you're going to write about it, but now the biggest story of them all is that the police chief just 'made up' the 5 meter 'identify yourself or be incarcerated' law--it wasn't on the books at all...This should shake the very foundation of our 'civil society'

Sparky : Just in from a long day at work so missed the moment on the new making shit up and lying about it policy from Blair. Besides ,Dr. Dawg, Mattt, The Jurist, and Dave have it pretty well covered I'd say.

Has anybody else noticed this:at about 4:16 in this video... we see a young guy in a blue rain jacket with a grey backpack. He has light brown wavy hair.I swear he is the guy that CBC has featured in almost all their newsclips with a spot on shot of him smashing a big window. They ran it again yesterday during the press report with the chief of police on TV.I saw this video late Monday night.He doesn't seem to get arrested altho he is in there amongst others while the riot squad attacks.I emailed Antonia Zerbias to inform her, but she didn't seem to know what CBC clip I was referring to.Being on CBC news all the time, I kept seeing this guy.Mark Kelly ran it too, everytime they mentioned violent protestors, this guy with wavy brown hair, blue rain jacket and grey backpack is smashing and kicking in a window, then he runs down the street.I thought it strange that he was featured rather than someone in black.

O : The guy in Joe's vid above at the 2:42 mark is wearing a blue jacket with black trim down the arm that extends around the elbows. The jacket on the guy in the CBC vids has no black trim over the elbows. Of course the backpacks may contain a variety of jackets but that could be true of any number of other people too. What do you think now?

very sorry Alison, I should have looked closer before I lept.I had that image imprinted after the CBC ran it on almost every clip of their reports.They do look very similar tho.OEMsigned in as anonymous because my google password isn't working since a computer repair

Thank you for this last exchange in comments.A whole lot is being made of this video via Torontoist 14 Essential G20 Videos accusing the guy stomping the 766 police car of being a police provocateur on the basis of his big build and backpack and haircut. Do we really want to go down the road of posting pictures of protesters and accusing them of working for the police on this kind of evidence?

not necessarily un-likely if he was working undercover in the black bloc or another fringe group, he can show his face because he knows he has impunity from prosecution and it will galvanize his position in the group. Those fearful of capture would hide their faces, turning it around - how many black bloc'ers expose their faces to hundreds of cameras?

The scary woman with the curly red hair is definitely a police officer, please follow link below for a picture from the Guardian of her helping arrest somebody, note the chartreuse band which the other cop (in the black cap) also has, looks like a police logo on it.

Absolutely, Anon, that's her.This vid clearly shows the same two from your Guardian pic again - from the 1:40 mark on - after a sitting protester is snatched off behind the police line. The other undercovers in this vid are also the same ones disappearing behind police lines in the 'crazy cop lady' video.Thing is - I don't think anyone disputes that there were undercover cops there or that they made arrests. What we do not have is evidence that they also provoked or engaged in vandalism. In other words there's no evidence they acted as provateurs.